The Beauty and the Sorrow (68 page)

s
When things were at their worst, fifty-four divisions were involved and large parts of the Western Front were effectively undefended. (The fact that the German army somehow failed to discover and exploit this significant disruption has to be seen as the biggest intelligence blunder of the First World War—all the more so as the Germans were very skilful in exploiting and supporting the Bolsheviks in Russia as a means of undermining the Russian war effort.) Some of the French mutineers demanded an immediate peace, others threatened to march on Paris, while the majority were simply satisfied with refusing to carry out attacks and submitted lists of demands for simple, concrete improvements in food, medical care, leave and so forth. The resulting executions were consequently few in number whereas the improvements in material conditions for the troops were quite considerable.

t
The Italian army executed just over 1,000 of its own men during the war, which is far more than the number executed in the British army (361), not to mention the German army (48). Over 15,000 Italian troops were condemned to life imprisonment for crimes against military discipline and many of them remained in prison long after the war was over, in some cases until 1945. The Italian commander-in-chief, Luigi Cadorna, insisted on “iron discipline.”

u
During January 1917 German U-boats sank thirty-five vessels with a combined weight of 109,954 tons; by April those figures had risen to 155 vessels and 516,394 tons, though the losses declined following the introduction of the convoy system and a policy of more aggressive mine-laying. Air Force pilots also became more skilled at sinking U-boats. (The first submarine sunk at sea by aircraft was the French
Foucault
, dispatched by Austrian seaplanes in the Adriatic on 15 September 1916.)

v
Many soldiers detested being under attack from grenade launchers and mortars since, unlike other artillery pieces, their projectiles made very little noise as they travelled through the air and therefore arrived without audible warning. (They were, however, rather slow, so it was often possible to see them coming.)

w
Educated Africans were beginning to think that the war would lead to colonialism destroying itself.

x
Gunshot wounds.

y
Now better known as the Kerensky offensive after Alexander Kerensky, the incumbent prime minister in Russia’s Provisional Government, who had ordered it that July when minister of war.

z
Maria “Yashka” Bachkarova, who was eventually executed in 1920 as an enemy of the people for her connections with the White Russian military. Her unit was known as the 1st Russian Women’s Battalion of Death.

aa
The problem was not just that imports were being cut off by the British blockade; the previous year the government had banned the import of “exotic” foods such as mandarins, raisins, pineapples, ginger and vanilla.

bb
He felt there was some justification for a reaction of that kind. In a letter to another acquaintance France wrote, “As if it wasn’t enough that the war is causing such dreadful suffering; it is also making idiots of all those who haven’t already gone mad.”

cc
The first two of these proposals were by that time off the table: the American proposal because the United States had entered the war and the German one because its originator, Bethmann-Hollweg, had lost his battle against the hawks in Berlin and left office. In July a majority in the German Reichstag had voted by 212 to 126 in favour of a resolution demanding peace without either territorial gains or reparations: this ran completely counter to the ambitions of the men who in reality now held power in Germany—the military high command, with Hindenburg and Ludendorff in the lead. This meant that the so-called civil truce of 1914 was broken and Bethmann-Hollweg’s position as the man trying to balance the scales became untenable.

dd
Caporetto is actually the name given to the place after the war, when the region became Italian; in 1917 it was still Austrian territory and the small town was called Karfreit. The name of the offensive is slightly misleading in that the real breakthrough took place north of Caporetto/Karfreit. This idyllic spot, now in Slovenia, is called Kobarid and has a small but excellent museum devoted to the battle.

ee
The storm-troop tactics were used for the first time at the beginning of September when, without any great strain, they broke the Russian front at Riga and sent the whole of the Russian Twelfth Army careering wildly to the north. In France, later in the same month, German units trained in the new infiltration tactics beat back the British tank-supported breakthrough at Cambrai.

ff
The most famous description of the Italian collapse at Caporetto is Ernest Hemingway’s
Farewell to Arms
. For all its literary merits, however, this is not a first-hand account. Hemingway did not arrive in Italy until the following year and was never present at the actual scene of the fighting. He wrote most of the book at home in Kansas City during the summer of 1928, after equipping himself with sundry maps and historical works. Another account, nothing like as well known although written by a man who was to become famous, is Erwin Rommel’s
Infanterie greift an
(Infantry Attacks). The battles he took part in as a young lieutenant in an Alpine regiment are described in slightly Cubist language and in great detail, with the aid of plentiful cartographic material. He won the Pour le Mérite at Caporetto.

gg
Given that the American forces also had a very strict ban on alcohol, warnings of this kind tended to reinforce the image of the Americans as moralising puritans.

hh
A vigilant reader might wonder how such an enigmatic entry can provide a picture of that day’s fighting. Fortunately, in addition to other source material, the preface to the fourth edition of Monelli’s book about his war experiences (written in April 1928) relates what happened in much greater detail.

ii
The colonel was Henri Descoins; the republic the Autonomous Albanian Republic of Korçë, which reverted to Albania in 1920.

jj
Gustave Libeau (1877–1957), Belgian actor.

kk
At the moment, at least, the situation is quite favourable. The slaughter of Allied airmen during the spring is a thing of the past and the war in the air is much more evenly balanced. Indeed, there are even signs that the Germans are under pressure. In this area, as in others, the weight of the Allied production apparatus has begun to make itself felt.

ll
Infiltration tactics meant that the attacking forces, instead of attacking on a long, unbroken front in the hope of overcoming the whole of the enemy line, functioned as small mobile units, which would try to exploit weak points in the enemy’s defences and simply circumvent the strong ones. These small mobile units would then attempt to push as far as possible into the rearward areas, preferably reaching the enemy artillery, without which the tough strongpoints further forward would be lost.

mm
Since 1916 Mexico had been the scene of a civil war between the rebel Pancho Villa and President Carranza (a man with the interesting Christian name Venustiano). Allied propaganda in the United States worked hard to convince public opinion that Villa was some sort of German-controlled threat, and he went some way towards justifying their claims by accepting relatively small sums of money from German agents. Enraged by American support for President Carranza, Villa then attacked American citizens in northern Mexico and in March 1916 carried out a raid into New Mexico, where he attacked the small town of Columbus, killing some twenty Americans. The United States responded immediately by invading northern Mexico. (This was not the first time during this period that the American military had simply marched into various more or less sovereign countries. They fought against Spain in 1898, fought a colonial war in the Philippines between 1899 and 1902, went into Nicaragua in 1912, and sent the Marine Corps into Haiti in 1915 and into the Dominican Republic in 1916. This invasion of Mexico was the second within just a few years: they had mounted a military intervention in 1914 with the aim of toppling the sitting government.) For some time American forces chased the clouds of dust that the ever-evasive Villa and his men left behind them. Villa’s raids across the border into the United States were still continuing at this point.

nn
The reference is to the mutiny in Étaples (known to British soldiers as “Eat-Apples”) from 9 to 12 September. In Étaples, which was near the coast, there was a training camp where the discipline was unusually harsh. The whole thing started when a New Zealand soldier, who had been absent without leave, was arrested by the hated military police and accused of desertion. His fellow soldiers and other discontented troops gathered and demanded that he be freed; fighting broke out, shots were fired and one of the demonstrators was killed. More and more soldiers flocked to the spot and the military police were driven out of the camp without further ado. Disturbances and spontaneous demonstrations continued over the following days. On 12 September Pollard’s battalion and two other reliable units were sent in, armed with clubs, and between them they succeeded in quashing the mutiny.

1918

This is going to be our evil inheritance, or our good inheritance, in any case our irrevocable inheritance—and we are going to be fettered by our memories for ever.

PAOLO MONELLI

Chronology 1918

A DAY AT THE BEGINNING OF JANUARY
1918
Pál Kelemen watches the war in the air over Castellerio

A beautiful, clear and sunny winter’s day. When the fronts are quiet, as here in northern Italy, the war in the air still continues. A big Italian Caproni bomber is droning along in the clear blue sky and the Austro-Hungarian anti-aircraft guns are aiming heavy fire at it. Puffy clouds of white smoke blossom like flowers in the sky, but always in vain.
^*
The smoke from the explosions gradually thins and disperses in the wind. A solitary Austrian monoplane flies into view and begins chasing the slow, three-engined bomber. Pál Kelemen notes in his journal: